News from the Heights

Le Moyne College Hosts Talk on Race, Gender and Religion

SYRACUSE, N.Y. (For Immediate Release) … Le Moyne College will host a talk by Fay Botham on Thursday, Feb. 3, at 4 p.m. in the Reilley Room, located in Reilly Hall. Her talk is titled “‘The Purity of the White Woman’: Race, Gender and Religion in American Anti-Miscegenation Law.”

In her talk, Botham will explore the workings of race, gender and Christianity in historical American bans on interracial marriage, considering the ways in which this history serves as a framework for understanding today's debates over same-sex marriage.

Botham is visiting assistant professor of religious studies at the University of Iowa. Prior to that, she taught at Loyola-Marymount University-Los Angeles and Hobart and William Smith College. She is the author of “Almighty God Created the Races: Christianity, Interracial Marriage, and American Law, 1865-1967,” published by the University of North Carolina Press. She is currently working on a new book titled “Forceful Entry: Gender, Nature and Empire in the Sixteenth-Century Spanish Americas.” Botham holds a master’s degree and doctorate in religion from Claremont Graduate University and a bachelor’s degree in political science from Wheaton College.

The event is free and open to the public. It is sponsored by the gender and women’s studies program, the Center for Peace and Global Studies and the religious studies department.
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ThinkProgress.org includes Le Moyne as one of 11 institutions across the country that "...are taking concrete steps to amend their policies, expand their training programs, and let new students know they want to improve" as it relates to sexual assaults.